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LITERATURE
Poems
• A poem is a work of literature that uses the
sounds and rhythms of a language to evoke
deeper significance than the literal meanings
of the words (Terry Eagleton, 1996).
‘I loved you’ - Alexander Pushkin
iamb convince
trochee borrow
anapest contradict
dactyl accurate
spondee seaweed
When the blood
creeps and the
nerve prick
Number of feet Meter
1 Monometer
2 Dimeter
3 Trimeter
4 Tetrameter
5 Pentameter
6 Hexameter
7 Heptameter
8 Octameter
Meter (or metrics)
English poetry employs five basic meters, including:
• iambic meter (unstressed/stressed)
“If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! It had a dying fall:”
(Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare)
• E.g.:
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
(Grecian Urn by John Keats)
Lyric Poetry: Elegy
Elegy: It is a lyric poem that mourns the dead. It has no set metric or stanzaic
pattern, but it usually begins by reminiscing about the dead person, then laments
the reason for the death, and then resolves the grief by concluding that death
leads to immortality. It can have a fairly formal style, and sound similar to an ode.
• E.g.:
“Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear,
I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer …”
• (Lycidas by John Milton)
Lyric Poetry: Sonnet
Sonnet
• It is a lyric poem consisting of 14 lines and is usually
written in iambic pentameter.
• There are two basic kinds of sonnets:
– the Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet
The Italian/Petrarchan sonnet is named after Petrarch, an
Italian Renaissance poet. The Petrarchan sonnet consists of
an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines).
– the Shakespearean (or Elizabethan/English) sonnet.
The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains (four
lines each) and a concluding couplet (two lines). The
Petrarchan sonnet tends to divide the thought into two parts
(argument and conclusion), while the Shakespearean into
four (the final couplet is the summary).
Narrative Poem: Ballad
Ballad: It is a narrative poem that has a musical
rhythm and can be sung. A ballad usually has a
simple rhythm structure, and tells the tales of
ordinary people.
Narrative Poem: Epic
Epic: It is a long narrative poem in elevated style
recounting the deeds of a legendary or historical
hero.
• The Odyssey by Homer (~800 BCE)
• Beowulf of English literature (~8th-11th century
CE)
• Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667)
• The Mahabharata of Indian literature (350 BCE)
Narrative Poem: Limerick
Limerick: It is a very structured poem, usually
humorous & composed of five lines (a cinquain), in an
aabba rhyming pattern; beat must be anapestic (weak,
weak, strong) with 3 feet in lines 1, 2, & 5 and 2 feet in
lines 3 & 4. It's usually a narrative poem based upon a
short and often ribald anecdote.
• E.g.:
There was a Young Lady of Lucca,
Whose lovers completely forsook her;
She ran up a tree,
And said, 'Fiddle-de-dee!'
Which embarrassed the people of Lucca.
(Young Lady of Lucca - Edward Lear)
Narrative Poem: Limerick
A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill holds more than his belican.
He can take in his beak,
Enough food for a week,
But I'm damned if I see how the helican.